KickApps Upgrades Social CMS

KickApps Tuesday announced the latest upgrade to a social software development suite designed to let Web publishers manage their website content and social experiences under a unified content management solution (CMS).

Called KickApps 5.0, the social CMS platform incorporates all online assets including editorial, social media, and video, without requiring publishers to manage multiple-point solutions and their related interoperability and resource issues, according to the developer. Publishers can extend their content beyond standalone websites to include web-based platforms such as Facebook, as well as mobile devices including iPhones, iPads, and Androids.

"The Web has evolved from a broadcast medium into a highly interactive social medium," Alex Blum, CEO of KickApps, who joined the five-year-old company in 2007 after a stint at AOL, said in a statement. "Traditional CMS platforms were built for an outdated approach to deploying and managing editorial-centric content and lack meaningful social integration. It's simply no longer practical for brands to juggle multiple, single-purpose platforms when the goal is to deliver a unified user experience -- and, for the first time, we've made the need to integrate those siloed systems completely unnecessary."

KickApps 5.0 also can quickly reach an unlimited number of custom web pages fully optimized for social interaction tools such as comments, tags, ratings, and sharing, the company said. These pages can quickly launch internally or externally user-generated or editorial content in multiple formats. The solution also now features Pro Video, which provides content curation, advanced set creation, monetization capabilities, support for Apple's i family of products, and optimized uploads.

Clients can integrate KickApps' CMS with other CMS products as needed, according to the company.

Existing KickApps customers include NBC Universal, American Express, Scripps Network, HBO, Cinemax, Cox Television, the Washington Redskins, the Phoenix Suns, and the New York Rangers.

As corporations contend with varied forms of content, the market for enterprise content management solutions is expected to reach $9.3 billion by 2014, according to Wintergreen Research.

"Initiatives that use text to implement services oriented architecture (SOA) services are anticipated to create a climate for growth of content management services. In this context, documents may be text based, image based, video content, or software system modules. All the modules require management and indexing," Wintergreen Research wrote in its report.

Not surprisingly, a number of vendors have entered the fray, either by unveiling upgrades or new products or through acquisition, such as Adobe's recent purchase of Day Software Holding.